中国の人道主義者の運命（反体制という言葉より適している）
Blind Chinese Activist Escapes from House Arrest, Said to Enter U.S. Protection
By Hannah Beech | April 2012
On April 22, Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese legal activist named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in 2006, escaped from detention in eastern Shandong province, according to He Peirong, an online advocate who has followed Chen’s case for several years. He, an English teacher who was galvanized by Chen’s plight to engage in human-rights campaigning, said that Chen contacted her after his escape from his village house, which has been heavily guarded by local security personnel for years. In a post on Chinese microblog site Sina Weibo on the evening of April 26, He said that after Chen called her, she drove a car to Shandong to pick him up and “hid him in a safe place.”
By the morning of April 27, rumors floated online that Chen — who has been jailed, beaten and harassed for years because of his legal activism on behalf of women who were forced to abort late-term fetuses that were seen as contravening local family-planning regulations — had sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. A day later, ChinaAid, a U.S.-based rights group that for years has been advocating on behalf of one of China’s best-known activists, released a statement saying that it had “learned from a source close to the Chen Guangcheng situation that Chen is under U.S. protection and high level talks are currently under way between U.S. and Chinese officials regarding Chen’s status.” ChinaAid President Bob Fu, a Christian activist who suffered persecution in his native country, said: “This is a pivotal moment for U.S. human rights diplomacy. Because of Chen’s wide popularity, the Obama Administration must stand firmly with him or risk losing credibility as a defender of freedom and the rule of law. If there is a reason why Chinese dissidents revere the U.S., it is for a moment like this.” The U.S. Embassy in Beijing has refused to comment on the matter. However, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has in the past publicly urged the Chinese government to stop its persecution of Chen. She will be in Beijing next week for economic talks between the two nations.
This isn’t the first time a high-profile Chinese has sought American protection, complicating relations between the two powers. In February, Wang Lijun, a lieutenant of disgraced Chongqing chief Bo Xilai, made a mad dash to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu, where he holed up for 24 hours and leaked incriminating information about his former boss to American diplomats. The former Chongqing police chief, who has been linked with torture and organ-transplantation, then left U.S. custody of his own accord, according to both American and Chinese statements. Back in 1989, as Beijing was still reeling from the bloodshed of the Tiananmen tragedy and pro-democracy protesters were being rounded up by security forces, Fang Lizhi, a democracy activist and astrophysicist who was often dubbed a Chinese Sakharov, fled to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He stayed there for more than a year before being allowed to leave China. He died this month in exile in Arizona at age 76.
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